II.
THOMAS ANBUREY, AND THE CONVENTION ARMY IN VIRGINIA.
1779.
Lieutenant Anburey—Progress of the Convention Army—Winter Roads—Charlottesville—Colonel Harvey—The Piedmont Plantation—Roundabout Directions—The Quarter-Race—Richmond—Forest Fire—Barrack Cats.
GENERAL BURGOYNE, of amiable qualities but of no great skill as a commander, having had the misfortune to lose his army at Saratoga, in the month of October, 1777, a convention was agreed upon, stipulating the treatment to be accorded the defeated troops. Thereafter, until exchanged, these Saratoga troops were known among themselves as the Convention Army. The art of saving one’s face is one of the most intricate yet in existence. Young Thomas Anburey, who was perhaps a lieutenant in the Twenty-ninth Regiment of Foot under General Burgoyne, surrendered with his brother officers, and with them was sent first to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later to Virginia. Anburey, a very cheerful young person, kept a sort of journal of his military and other travels in America, and worked up his notes into the form of letters to a friend. His observations are not profound, but are marked by good sense and ingenuousness, and make much better reading than more pretentious narratives.[E]
After being quartered for more than a year in Massachusetts, Anburey and his friends were sent South, in order to shift the incidence of taxation in the matter of subsistence for so many able-bodied men, numbers of whom (the Hessians, for instance) no doubt had in America their first opportunity of getting at least one square meal a day. “Especially the Germans,” says Anburey, “who seeing in what a comfortable manner their countrymen live, left us in great numbers, as we marched through New York, the Jerseys and Pennsylvania; among the number of deserters is my servant, who, as we left Lancaster, ran from me with my horse, portmanteau, and everything he could take with him.” It was at best a strange spectacle, this of an army of desirable citizens marching captive through an abounding wilderness, and merely on parole.
From Lancaster the Convention Army moved to Frederick Town, in Maryland, where they spent Christmas Day, 1778. The commissary of provisions at Frederick, Mr. McMurdo, was very polite to the officers quartered at his house. Anburey says: “His attention was such that although for this day (which is as much a day of festival as in England), he had been engaged for some time past among his friends and relations, he would stay at home and entertain us with an excellent Christmas dinner, not even forgetting plum pudding. I now experienced what had been often told me, that the further I went to the southward I should find the inhabitants possess more liberality and hospitality.” Anburey’s impressions of the North, of course, were formed rather precipitately at Saratoga.
Charlottesville, almost a frontier town then, was the destination of the Convention Army. “After we left Frederick Town we crossed the Potowmack River with imminent danger, as the current was very rapid, large floats of ice swimming down it; though the river was only half a mile wide, the scow that I crossed over in had several narrow escapes. At one time it was quite fastened in the ice, but by great exertions of the men in breaking it, we made good our landing on the opposite shore, near a mile lower than the ferry.” And the river crossed, hardships only increased on the Virginia side. The roads were bad from a late fall of snow not sufficiently encrusted to bear a man’s weight. The troops were continually sinking in mud up to their knees and cutting their shins and ankles; and after a march of sixteen or eighteen miles over such badly metalled roads, the men often had to sleep in the woods and the officers in any cabin available.
“But on our arrival at Charlottesville no pen can describe the scene of misery and confusion that ensued. The officers of the First and Second Brigade were in the town, and our arrival added to their distress. This famous place we had heard so much of consisted only of a courthouse, one tavern, and about a dozen houses, all of which were crowded with officers. Those of our brigade, therefore, were obliged to ride about the country and entreat the inhabitants to take us in.” The men fared very badly. Instead of sleeping on the snow, under the trees, they went into barracks, hastily covering over a few cabins which had been begun but were left unroofed, and half-filled with snow. The trouble was that Colonel Harvey, to whom Congress had assigned the business of getting quarters ready for the tourists, had in turn placed his brother in charge. Colonel Harvey’s brother said that the army was not expected until the spring. There was no whiskey provided, the stock of provisions was scant, and the quarters were as described of the fretwork description.